The Clay-Craft of Otto Gerharz
Otto Keramik was founded in Rheinbach, Germany in 1964 by Otto Gerharz Sen. — a ceramicist whose obsession with glaze chemistry had already shaped one of the defining studios of postwar German pottery.
Before founding Otto Keramik, Gerharz Sen. spent over a decade at RUSCHA, where he served as creative works manager from 1951. It was there he developed the deep technical knowledge of glaze formulation that would come to define his own studio's work. When he left to establish Otto Keramik, designer Kurt Tschörner followed — and together they built a visual language that collectors now recognise immediately: bold sculptural forms, vivid volcanic glazes, and a surface quality that no industrial process could replicate.
In 1970, the studio moved to an industrial estate in Rheinbach, giving Gerharz Sen. the space and facilities to scale his glaze research. The results — layered, dripping, three-dimensional surfaces in fiery reds, deep blues, and earthy browns — became what the collecting world now calls Fat Lava. Each piece fired differently. Each glaze reaction was unrepeatable. That unpredictability was not a flaw; it was the point.
Otto Keramik remained deliberately small. Where other studios industrialised, Gerharz Sen. held to handcraft. Quality was not a marketing position — it was a constraint he imposed on every piece that left the kiln.
In 1994, Otto Gerharz Jr. assumed leadership of production, carrying the studio forward while extending its glaze vocabulary into new territory. Two years later, when RUSCHA closed permanently in 1996, Otto Keramik acquired and preserved a selection of its historic designs — a fitting continuation of the relationship between the two studios that had begun four decades earlier.
Today, Otto Keramik is one of the last surviving postwar German art potteries still in production. Every piece is handcrafted in Rheinbach, glazed and fired individually, and finished to the same standard Otto Gerharz Sen. established in 1964.
The Book
In 2026, Christine & Roy Hutt published Otto Keramik. Manifesto of the Modern — the first authorized book on Otto Keramik, researched in close collaboration with the Gerharz family and verified for historical accuracy by Otto Gerharz Jr. It is the only comprehensive record of the studio's history, its forms, and its ceramics, drawn from private collections across Europe that had never previously been documented in print. 196 pages. Large format. Photographed in high definition on premium silk-matte paper to showcase every detail of the glazes. Stitch-bound to last.
For collectors, it is an indispensable reference — delivering deeper knowledge of the glazes, production processes, and form identification that until now has never been published.